On Deviation

‘There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.’
— Francis Bacon

‘Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. You will be certain to find something you have never seen before.’
— Alexander Graham Bell

‘If you come to a fork in the road, take it.’
— Yogi Berra

‘He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.’
— Albert Einstein

‘Congratulate yourselves if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotomy of a decorous age.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘Creative thinking may simply mean the realization that there is no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done.’
— Rudolph Flesch

‘The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous. The sensible man, almost nothing.’
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

‘If you follow all of the rules, you’ll miss all of the fun.’
— Katherine Hepburn

‘Who never walks save where he sees men’s tracks makes no discoveries.’
— J. G. Holland

‘Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.’
— Abraham Lincoln

‘Beaten paths are for beaten men.’
— John Lubbock

‘Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.’
— Christopher Morley

‘Only dead fish swim with the stream.’
— Malcolm Muggeridge

‘I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.’
— Pablo Picasso

‘I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.’
— Dodie Smith

‘Anyone can look for history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store.’
— Robert Wieder

‘Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.’
— Frank Zappa